Saturday, November 10, 2007

Whats happening

First the bad news - After the OpenSolaris.org developer summit I have not had much time to devote to OpenSolaris :(

The good news is the reason why this has happened is that I have been getting ready to start work in Scotland as a contractor for Fidelity National Information Services. Due to NDA's I can not reveal much about the work, but if you look at their website you can see that it involves software for banks. At the moment I am just waiting for some paperwork needed for my visa. Since I am coming from Bangkok I had to do a Tuberculosis test. This involved an X-Ray from a hospital in Bangkok, which the process was relatively simple considering a language barrier. English is not as widely spoken in Thailand as people may think, and my Thai sux. BTW the TB results was negative....

Over the next year at least, I will do a lot of flying between Glasgow and Bangkok. This will be interesting. Not only a big change in timezone, but a huge change in climate. The temperature in Bangkok is around 32C (max) and 24C (min), while in Glasgow it is warm 12C (max) and 7C (min) and getting colder.

Being the new kid on the block, I drew the short straw and will be working over Christmas and New Years. My wife is a little upset about this as she wont see me for about 8 weeks. On the plus side is it will be yet another country I will be able to experience Christmas and New Year. Last year I was in Phayao, Thailand. The year before that I was in Kobe and Tokyo, Japan.

As the software is developed on Windows, I have had to change my laptop back to Windows, with Solaris Express using vmware. It reminds me just how much Windows is a horrible development platform. It really does sux. Luckily it is not what the customer chose to use. I can only say that they have made an excellent choice of both operating system and hardware platform :)

Another plus is that hopefully I will have time to visit the OpenSolaris user groups within the region. I will try to at least to go to a meeting of the world famous Ireland OpenSolaris User Group. This should be some good craic.

The next post I will try to find a pub with wi-fi, open fire and fine ale.